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"Listening to headphones over YouTube...? Hahaha!"

Dealux

Active Member
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Aug 31, 2019
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Not really. Only you can't insert deep enough.
The er4s needs 13khz canal resonance. And it's designed to utilize it. Too shallow you get 8k peak 12-13k dip. Too deep you get 8k dip. It's tunable basically.
Hmmm... Based on the FR graph on the site I would say the 7-8K dip is a feature of the tuning but it is hard to judge the magnitude of this dip (likely not huge vs the Etymotic target because boosting it induces some harshness).

I think I got what was essentially the intended sound profile with the foam tips only, inserted as deep as they can go (not as deep as some of the smaller silicone tips). I got that based on the increased perception/audibility of room cues in recordings. I could pretty much hear the flat treble response above and the resulting detail coming from that but to me this IEM still sounds relatively muffled compared to most over-ears. The uncanny feeling that "this doesn't sound like a speaker at all even though it's relatively well balanced" is much stronger with IEMs. Though other more expensive sets have failed about as much to impress me and most of them seem to fail on the above 10K treble extension front.

IEMs can offer a smoother sound and a more articulate sound but at the cost of raw detail due to lack of extension and sometimes gaping holes in the upper treble which stick out a lot in an otherwise smooth response.

That actually reminds me of my impression of Oluv's sound demos. They're technically not the most accurate but when you listen to them on reasonably flat speakers and reference the original track you can really start to hear those strange dips in the treble that headphones suffer from. That's what typically makes headphones worse than speakers for me generally. I can almost never escape that uncanny feeling of "this isn't quite right even though I'm enjoying the clarity of having a speaker close to my ear".
 

Sharur

Senior Member
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Apr 10, 2021
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Still unclear how you deem something "bass heavy" subjectively as that was the first objection raised. Without out the context of how it detracts from your listening pleasure how would someone value such a judgement? Can you rule out that you haven't been conditioned to dislike an increased bass output reflexively? Or that previous gear has formed your expectations. I trust that you are clever enough to know that I'm asking in good faith.
Huge detail loss from masking...
Bass shelves starting above 200 Hz are boomy by definition
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ziddy76

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Sep 13, 2021
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Personally I find both of them flawed at the same point, namely thinking that measuring/recording with a specific rig or real ear will give results that can be generalised, unfortunately the variation of human HRTF tells the contrary so I am afraid there will never be absolute judgements, scores and EQs for headphones.

Well contradiction is that we are listening to Oluv's video through different headphones. What I do like that is that he switches from headphone to headphone, his review of a headphone isn't just that headphone usually. So you can at least somewhat hear the difference between the headphones.

Sean can say whatever nonsense he wants, he's just a shill for Harman. This thread focuses too much on Oluv's measuring and recording methods, when that's not what his channel is about. His channel is about listening to music, the gear is the tool for that. His methods point out the obvious flaws and often uses EQ to rectify that. Finding reviews for headphones IMO is really trying to find a reviewer who has similar sound preference, Oluv and I seem to be alike, I like him. Bad Guy Good Audio Reviews I sorta appreciate his angle on how he reviews gear, but he and I don't hear alike and his choice in music is also different. He praises gear that makes his favorites sound great and I'm not a fan of them, so it makes sense. I can appreciate that, from a guy who doesn't care all that much about graphs and has open disdain for Harman, which I also like.

I think reviewers should be like Oluv and Bad Guy Good Audio Review, they should grow some balls and review headphones based on their preferences and what they like and not conforming to ideals from any group of people or some frequency graph. Once the viewer or reader can assess what kind of sound they like, their reviews become valuable.

This was the same with Tyll, once you know what flavor of sound he likes his reviews make more sense. And I can appreciate Tyll for standing by his style of reviewing.

Also at least I get the sense Oluv listens to music. Sean Olive likes to listen to graphs from random 200+ people's preferences.

I enjoy his vids cause he's clearly having fun with audio. He doesn't come off like a douche like The Headphone Show guy does. His wireless bluetooth speaker vids are his best vids.

The thing that disturbs me most with Oluv isn't Oluv, it's that he's had TWO Elex headphones break and his friend also has dead Elex, 3/3 Focal Elex dead headphones. That's truly disturbing.
 
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